“I love you, too.” Morgan was the best. It hurt to smile, if that’s what he was doing. He might be grimacing for all he knew.
“Is that Alexa?” Morgan gestured to the driveway. Vic looked over his shoulder at the car he hadn’t noticed as Chelsea and Layla exited the front door of the ranch house.
Jayden’s sister–slash–attorney-at-law climbed from her vehicle to greet the other two women, and then the three of them headed in Vic and Morgan’s direction.
“Do you think it’s good news?” Morgan asked him.
“The way my week’s going?” he mumbled. “I doubt it.”
“I told you she was a good girl, didn’t I, Morg?” Layla called out as she approached. She took the mare’s reins in hand as soon as she was close enough.
“You never miss a chance to smell like a horse,” Alexa teased Layla as she pulled the sunglasses off her nose.
“Never,” Layla agreed with her best friend before planting a smacking kiss on the horse’s muzzle.
“You look awful,” Chelsea told Vic.
“He’s fine,” Morgan snapped before turning to Alexa and complimenting her outfit. Ever the city girl at heart, Alexa’s jeans and shirt were crisp and pressed.
“So?” Chelsea prompted their visitor.
Alexa got right to the point. “There’s been a new development.”
Vic didn’t have to look at his siblings to know he wasn’t the only one whose ears had perked.
Alexa recapped what they’d learned about the surveyor Vic had seen on the property. Her name was Ruby. She’d been hired by Heath—nothing new there.
Vic braced for bad news to follow. That seemed par for the course. Bad news on top of bad news, and then to the left of that, oh, look...more bad news.
Alexa leveled him with a sharp look. “I spoke with Jonas Shaw and asked for an update. He finally touched base with Sylvia.”
“Sylvia, as in your grandfather’s retired secretary,” Layla said, her eyebrows lifting meaningfully.
“One and the same. She wrapped up her wilderness trek and reached out to the investigator. She had plenty to say. It won’t come as a surprise to you all to hear she confirmed that my grandfather Augustus and your grandfather Victor Senior were as thick as thieves.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Chelsea said.
“Okay, I will.” Alexa tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Sylvia also mentioned an oil survey done the year before our grandfathers signed over the rights to Cynthia.”
Cynthia, as in Heath and Nolan Thurston’s mother. After Cynthia and her daughter, Ashley, had subsequently died, Heath had taken it upon himself to stir up trouble. Vic could understand acting out of grief to avenge his family, but the damage he was causing was unforgivable. The ranch was more to the Lattimores and Grandins than a chunk of land to fight over in court.
“There’s no proof of oil on this land,” Chelsea said.
“Which I’m sure is why the surveyor was poking around your property and ours,” Alexa said. “Sylvia swears there was an oil survey done in the past. According to her, the results were clear. There was never oil on this land.”
“That’s great,” Vic said, not trusting the relief in his voice.
“Not so fast.” Alexa held up a hand. “Sylvia can’t confirm it without paperwork. She went so far as to suggest the purported oil rights were given to Cynthia to keep her quiet.”
“Like hush money?” Morgan asked.
“What better way to keep the pregnancy quiet?” Alexa said.
Layla snorted. “It’s beginning to sound like Ashley Thurston was Uncle Daniel’s daughter after all.”
“The timing works,” Alexa admitted, “but without DNA, we can’t know for sure. The PI told me he was getting in touch with the surveyor Sylvia told him about, in the hopes of uncovering the original paperwork. We know his name’s Harry Lawrence and that he lives outside Houston. If he’s the stickler for record-keeping Sylvia swears he is, it’s only a matter of time before we know the truth.”
“What a mess,” Vic grumbled, eyes on the pile of shit he’d mucked from Titan’s stall. What an apt metaphor for his life right now. If that survey existed, it would prove whether or not there was oil on the land. If there was oil, hell...
Vic didn’t want to think about what might happen next.